I don’t see trainer bashing here, I see people sharing their personal experiences and some of them are less than flattering to the unnamed trainer. If if seems like trainer bashing to you, maybe you’re seeing something could be misinterpreted in your own program. While you said you agree that trainer horses should be included, if it makes you re-think how you’re presenting that information, then maybe that’s a good thing?
It isn’t that we don’t think our trainers should make a comfortable living. Most of us would much prefer our trainers drive safe vehicles, be able to get a coffee, take a vacation, pay for health insurance, etc…
The problem is the shadiness of a trainer not being up front that their personal horse will be on the bill but not included in the splits. Particularly in a smaller barn where the additional expense adds up fast when the extra stalls, hay, shavings, etc… are not being split up among 23 other horses.
(as a generic - not directed at you…)
As a trainer, if you’re comfortable with your behavior, you should have no issue being transparent how your personal horse’s show expense will be paid for under the splits. If you’re not comfortable telling your clients that the 12 stalls are going to be split by the 5 client horses, even though there are 7 horses there, well, that says something about your relationship with your clients.
There’s a whole long thread titled I Hate Horse Trainers, with hundreds of very negative comments on it.
Perhaps I am more sensitive to it, because I am a horse trainer. I do everything above board, and was actually accused by a former employer to being :honest to a fault". And I have many friends, also trainers, who are very honest hardworking people.
My comment about trainer bashing was in relation to this thread only, not to other threads on this board.
But you’ve got to admit, there are bad apples in every industry. And people are, in my experience, more likely to vocalize their complaints than their satisfaction. Not saying it’s ideal, it just is what it is.
One of my past trainers would leave 1 of their personal horses out of the splits. I didn’t board with them, but would meet them at shows and brought my own hay, grain etc. That was something the trainer was up front about.
I don’t remember all the details at this point. When I did ask about (because I thought it was odd) the response was that’s how Big Trainer told them to do it, trainer actually lost money showing since trainer could make a lot more teaching, blah blah.
I was never a fan of how that trainer billed but trainer was upfront and you could show or not. I’m pretty upfront and have been doing this way too long so I had zero problem asking.
I’m not sure how/when that started happening, if it’s always been done. It never happens to me before and didn’t happen with a new trainer who brings his own horses.
My comments were not intended to be “trainer bashing”. I strongly believe that the trainer should set their parameters as they see fit, as long as they are open and transparent about it.
If they don’t disclose not including their horses in the split, the nondisclosure is the problem.
If it it’s disclosed, there is no ethical problem. However, as a client, I would much rather employ a trainer who raises her training fee by $xxx per month and then scrupulously pays her own showing expenses. So the complaint is not that I subsidize her showing expenses (if she feels that’s part of the program), but how I subsidize them.
There are several problems with the subsidize-via-omitting-her-horses-from-split.
When I decide whether to show at show X, the cost of my doing so is not predictable. If everyone pays their own way scrupulously, I know very accurately what it will cost. However, if an unspecified number of trainer horse costs are split between an unspecified number of client horses, my expenses vary wildly depending on whether there is one (or zero) trainer horses and 8 client horses vs 4 trainer horses and 3 or 5 client horses. How can I make a good budgetary decision on whether to show if I don’t know whether the price to me is $xyz (my own costs) vs 150% or 200% of $xyz?
Let’s say the “true cost” of showing one horse is $xyz (same for trainer or me). Even if disclosed, the practice of the trainer off loading some of the expenses of her horses on the clients creates effective costs that are different from the “true costs”. Trainer pays some fraction (below one) of the true cost, client pays some factor (above 1) of the true cost. Since neither trainer nor client face prices consistent with the true cost of showing, clients show less and trainer brings more horses than they would if they faced the true costs. Showing is expensive. If my cost of showing is highly uncertain (point 1), and considerably higher than the true cost of showing my horse, I’m going to show a lot less or not at all. Actually, unless all trainers collude so that I can’t find a trainer who doesn’t engage in this practice, I’m probably going to leave (unless the trainer’s fee is so low relative to her skill that I am willing to put up with the ill effects of the practice).
This isn’t trainer bashing at all. We’re providing anonymous focus group feedback that in terms of paying the trainer well earned compensation, many of us would vastly prefer an explicit fee (higher fee per lesson or for full training, or per day coaching at shows) to a large, unpredictable surcharge on our own showing costs.
For the trainers who do this (dump some of their showing costs on clients rather than raise their explicit fees), what is the rationale for taking their pay in that form? Do they think it’s less obvious, so less painful than charging higher training fees? It’s not less painful, it’s more painful. If the trainer thinks the clients won’t notice (what they don’t know won’t drive them away), that’s disrespectful of the clients. If it is done in an underhanded, non disclosed way, when the clients figure it out (they will), then they’re wondering what other underhanded stuff the trainer is doing. And they’re leaving.
Clients often have a…weird…kind of relationship with their trainer. Not at all like any other business relationship with a service provider. And often trainers really are clueless about billing and taxes and think “ethics” is a word in a foreign language. Trainers do things because they can, possibly because they really don’t know any better. And, face it, theres no consequences, no certification, no license, no oversight of their profession. Not even peer review. So trainers do it without disclosure because they can.
Clients often see the trainer as a close personal friend and blindly follow along, sometimes almost cult like.
Its complicated.
For what its worth, always selected trainers with a la carte pricing (including a minimum of required services monthly) and none had problems itemizing said services at home or stall splits at shows.
I want to say I wouldn’t be able to show with a barn who does this because I budget very carefully. I can also absolutely see this being taken advantage of (like a dog stall). However, I do understand that if clients want to go show for 2 weeks and want trainer to come there is an additional expense to her to either pay someone to ride her horses at home or bring them along. Whether or not it’s fair to ask clients to pay for this entirely depends on the financial details that clients don’t see. Without clients paying for her stalls it may just not be financially feasible for her to come to the horse show to help them.
It’s somewhat similar to a trainer paying a travel fee. A trainer who has no animals and lives in an apartment may be able to pick up and leave for a show with few additional expenses while a trainer with pets or a family may need to charge enough of a travel fee to cover a house/pet sitter or baby sitter. Both situations are valid.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with this theory. This is where honesty comes into play. Either the trainer has to say that they can’t afford to go because there are not enough riders to make the day fees cover what they will lose by going, or admit that if they want the trainer to go they will have to pay for stalls for the trainer’s horses. Not just assume the riders are going to pay for their horses.
Too true. I have applied for a farm exemption and been refused. The criteria back then was "Do you run your activities with the intention to make money? And: Do you make money every 2 out of 7 years?
Well, I failed. At the time, I was rescuing horses off the track, and trying to resell them, but I did not make money when I added food. stabling, vet, farrier, etc. Given the cost of keeping horses, it is darn hard to make money. The trainer who is the subject of this thread must be making enough money that she does not need to include feed, trailering etc onto her list of money-making activities.
I don’t understand this logic. Do the clients who go to the show also have to pay for the lessons that aren’t being taught at home while the trainer is away?
The development of a horse is a personal choice. When my DH is sent out of town on business, his salary doesn’t change because the costs of child care or dog boarding or grass cutting have to get factored in. Why are trainers any different?
Yes! Clients going to the show must, in some way or another, make up for the lessons that are not being taught. There isn’t a “cancelled lesson” fee on your bill but the trainer absolutely must factor in cancelled lessons when deciding on their rates for travel and show training fees. They should not allow themselves (or feel forced to) to lose $1000 in lesson fees for a week but only profit $800 at the horse show.
No, his salary doesn’t change but his situation is actually quite similar. Your husband looked at the job requirements and pay/benefits etc and decided that it would work for him. If he was a single dad or had other expensive commitments and was actually losing money every time he traveled he would have either asked for more money or passed on the job entirely.
I get that. But DH does not get to say that being sent out of town on business upsets the training of his bird dog, so the compensation needs to include paying someone to continue the essential bird dog training.
The trainer’s personal horse is just that. A personal choice. Not a requirement for her success as a trainer to her clients.
This is obviously barn-dependent, but in my experience, most barns are, if anything, overly focused on shows because they tend to be more profitable than just giving lessons for the trainer (although admittedly a hassle, in terms of being away from home and the long and grueling hours). If anything, there’s pressure to show and an expectation to show, regardless of client desire. So taking into consideration the lost lessons makes me wonder why the trainer isn’t showing less and having the clients lesson more, if it’s genuinely more profitable.
All business decisions have opportunity costs. Making clients/customers pay for the opportunity cost of the trainer deciding the barn should show versus holding lessons is bizarre.
It would be one thing if the trainer said, “I’m totally burnt out, let’s take the weekend off,” and the clients said, “No, we want to go to this show, you know, you can bring your horse Rocky and we’ll split the cost of his show fees as an incentive.” But that’s not what’s going on.
Yes, trainers forego lessons while showing, but OTOH, clients are paying board and also paying for stalls/feed/bedding at the show.
On the whole, I think it’s better for the trainer to take financial responsibility for their own horses. If that means they need to charge more for their services, so be it.
Sure he does. If his bird dog training is very important to him and his job doesn’t provide him with the time or money then he has every right to ask for less travel/more pay or look for another job that better suits his priorities. Of course they can say no and maybe there’s no better job out there. Just like maybe a trainer’s clients all decide to leave. But no one (employer or paying customer) should expect someone to travel for them at a loss.
Plus you pay for coaching at shows, which is generally the same as the lesson fee. And even if your horse is in full time training, you still pay for training rides. And pro rides in warm up classes and divisions. On top of all the expenses we’ve both mentioned is shipping. Our trainer used to choose away shows because at $1.50 - $2.00 a mile RT there’s a bit of money to be made. I didn’t realized how much I was paying on shipping until I moved to a trainer who uses fuel splits.
There’s also the per diems and food. Our trainer was interesting - we had a show facility relatively close to the barn, and she lived within 10 minutes of it. Yet she would still take her camper and charge us all for that, too. I get doing that in winter when the weather is bad, but in spring and fall it was just another way to pad the bill. She would also take the horses to shows a few days early “to help them settle in.” If people were doing back to back shows she would haul the horse home in between for 2 days “so they could come home and get turned out”. I’m talking 5-6 hour away shows. In contrast, current trainer finds a pasture locally or at the show and rents it so the horses aren’t traveling all over the place.
Past trainer also told us that she makes money on shows and sales. Not lessons and training. When you look at how she billed everything you can see why.
Yup, been with one of these too. They were the ones who panicked when COVID shut down the shows. My current trainer set her rates so that she can be happy without loading up 10 horses to go to Ocala for 12 weeks and that way no one feels any pressure to show.
Curious about a fuel split though - I’ve always been billed per mile. Is your trainer only charging for hauling at cost?
Yeah, that’s… not smart business. They should absolutely be charging enough to cover both drive time + maintenance of truck & trailer. $1.50/mile is a steal compared to purchasing your own rig and hauling yourself… and, is she loading/unloading all these horses? Their tack, feed & boxes? At 6am? Think it’s a bit unfair to say trainer is picking away shows just because she makes a few bucks on the oh-so-delightful job of hauling.
The living down the street & camping at the show is odd, but the per mile hauling is absolutely legit. It’s stuff like that ~ questioning any hint of profit that might lead to a comfortable & secure lifestyle ~ that whifs of “trainer bashing” around here.
Fact is, trainers haven’t made a sound living off of board & training for decades now. TS & several others have made a killing off that basic math.
I wonder if this trainer does this because it gives them somewhere, away from stabling, to take a break during the day. To close the door and eat lunch with out having to talk with everyone. A tidy place to have spare clothes, a place to use the restroom where there is no line. They can stay the night or go home, depending on their schedule.
so I had zero problem asking.